Big Star: Extraordinary Skelton has a story worth hearing
Niche documentary features show jumper who has overcome life-threatening setbacks
Thursday, 5th June — By Dan Carrier
Nick Skelton riding Big Star at the London Olympics in 2012 [Cealy Tetley]
BIG STAR: THE NICK SKELTON STORY
Directed by Sarah George
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆
THERE is that lovely moment in the 1999 Richard Curtis film Notting Hill, when Hugh Grant blags his way into a press junket to meet the Hollywood superstar he has fallen hard for, and pretends he is a reporter for Hare and Hounds.
This film about extraordinary sportsman Nick Skelton and his lifelong passion for all things equestrian is perhaps the only film in the world the Grant character could genuinely have been on such a gig covering.
It is rather niche as a documentary, as is the world of professional horse jumping, but Skelton provides a gentle interviewee and hero, who has overcome life-threatening setbacks to win an Olympic gold medal in his late 50s. That alone makes his story worth telling.
He took a bad fall in 2000 and broke his back. But he somehow managed get back in the saddle, grab the reins and compete to win gold in London 2012 and then in Rio in 2016.
He and his ride – Big Star – retired in 2017 and here we are treated to a pen pic of a life working with horses. The son of a chemist with a passion for equestrian pastimes, he took his first ride aged 18 months, on a pony called Oxo who he loved dearly.
He became a young star as a show jumper – we see plenty of footage of him leaping across fences as a youth – and we hear of the efforts he made to learn how to jump. It’s not exactly rags to riches but we also see the hard graft, the clearing out of stables, and the care for the horses.
Skelton remains fairly unrevealing about the world that created and surrounded his success – from the support and then split from his wife, Sarah, to the tragedy of his accident and how he came back. But he really comes alive when he talks about horses. It opens up a view into a world genuine horse-jumping followers would recognise, but otherwise is a strange and curious place for the uninitiated.
And for all the care the horses are given, one cannot help but wonder what they make of it all: if Sketon’s rides had been more like Jonathan Swift’s Houyhnhnms, would they have let us humans anywhere near them?
